hi all,
just got back from the mouse on mars gig at other music and boy did they
rip shit up. first of all, I hope all of you who were wanting to go there
actually got in, since there was line around the corner of 4th and
lafayette half the way up the block... anyways, I came expecting what I
know from the mouse's first 3 full-lengths (haven't gotten instrumentals
yet) - lots of weird stuff and some relaxed beats. what we got was some
weird stuff and straight-through beats ranging from minimal house a la
studio 1 over hardcore to some attempts at techstep. and not to forget a
healthy dose of acidic squeaks out of andi toma's 303... andi also worked
an xbase 09, something new from germany that he identified as a 909
emulator. jan st. werner tweaked along on that xbase and beatmatched what I
guess were most of their beats from 2 pitch-control cd players - I later
saw one of the CDRs they burned for this purpose and it 4 tracks titled by
their BPMs, wich ranged from about 140 to 165. no, I wasn't in the wrong
venue, this was mouse on mars. occasionally he would grab a new dat out of
his bag.
they played I think 5 tracks, all about 10-15 minutes (this was one long
gig but time flew by) and with varying rhythms in themselves. after the
first 3 minimal/acid house tracks they asked us whether we wanted something
slow or something fast. the response was mixed, and they started with a
ambientish, dubby thing that evolved into changing patterns of manic breaks
and banging hardcore. their whole set would have easily kept any dancefloor
pumping for 1.5 hours.
other than that, andi&jan are two extremely kool guys that really seemed to
enjoy their gig, watched for crowd feedback and stayed on to sign cds,
posters and answer all our questions. oh, and I incorrectly claimed the
mouse to be from cologne, which is not entirely true. only andi is from
cologne, jan is from duesseldorf.
I know the 2 concerts w/ stereolab monday and tuesday are sold out, but if
you weren't there yesterday, it's gonna be well worth a try to get tix at
the show. this was the most enjoyable gig since mike p at kim's.
cheers,
--tom